Pastoral Letter for May 2017

Great-martyr and Trophy-bearer George was a Christian Roman soldier killed under Diocletian at the beginning of the fourth century. After innumerable forms of torture, St. George was executed by decapitation on May 6, 303. The witness of his suffering convinced Empress Alexandra and Athanasius, a pagan priest, to also become Christians, and so they also joined George in martyrdom as consequence.

St. Basil of Ostrog is commemorated in the Serbian orthodox liturgical calendar on May 12. He was a Serbian Orthodox bishop of Zahumlje. After his death in 1671 he was buried at the Ostrog Monastery he had founded in Montenegro, and his tomb in a cave-church soon became a site of pilgrimage.

Our fathers among the saints Cyril and Methodius were brothers who brought Orthodoxy to the Slavic peoples of central Europe in the ninth century. The brothers Cyril and Methodius are most renowned for the development of the Glagolitic alphabet that was used to bring literacy and Christian literature to the Slavs in their own language. With further development by their disciples it became the Cyrillic alphabet, which is now used by many of the Slavic peoples. The work of the brothers in translating the Holy Scriptures, the services, Nomocanon, and other Christian literature into Slavonic has been the greatest example of Orthodox missionaries bringing Christianity to the peoples of the world.

The Ascension of Christ is His final physical departure from this world after the Resurrection. It is the formal completion of His mission in this world as the Messianic Savior. It is His glorious return to the Father Who had sent Him into the world to accomplish the work that He had given him to do (Jn 17, 4–5).